


Fire, Stone and Stars

by CharismaticEnticer



Series: Forgetting the Past and Other Impossible Things (Twice!Verse) [3]
Category: Die Anstalt
Genre: Bad Combination, Bittersweet, Can't Move On, Codependency, Declarations Of Love, Fic Illustrated, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Misunderstandings, Moving On, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Canon, Present Tense, Sleep, Spoilers, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CharismaticEnticer/pseuds/CharismaticEnticer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even when sandwiched between his future and his past, Wood can't help but indulge in a little psychoanalysis.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Fic Illustrated as of 05/04/15.</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire, Stone and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, I first wrote this fic to bridge a gap. I'd written twelve Die Anstalt stories prior to this one, and I was almost ready to start a super big project that I have ongoing, but I didn't want that to be my thirteenth fic. (Yeah, when it comes to my fics I have triskaidekaphobia. Sue me.) So I put this one out first before I got started on that, and thus started the push to make this a genuine series rather than a two-shot.
> 
> This is essentially the Reality Check of the 'verse. Nothing is ever as simple as you hope, and it's gonna take more than a day to make someone you love, especially the one who inadvertently hurt you, love you back.
> 
> Originally written and published on July 5th 2012. **Fic Illustrated as of 05/04/2015.**
> 
> Die Anstalt © Martin Kittsteiner.

It's fascinating, in an odd sort of way, how like and yet unlike a normal Saturday today has been for Wood.  
  
...No, normal is such a strong word. It usually takes a month or two for changed circumstances to fit properly into the shifted puzzle of anyone's life. He, no matter how much the memory of himself insists, is no exception to the common rules. So as thrilling and degrading and wonderful an experience as being Ignatia's toy is, it isn't quite normal, not yet. He still can't quite get the  **words**  to settle, let alone the idea.  
"Wood, Ignatia's favourite cuddly toy". So unlike his old, one-two-month-old self. From the teetering ideal of the elite of psychoanalysis, into the pit of his own disturbance, then tossed out, chucked, sent headlong into this new vastly different life with so little time to adjust, yet so little reason not to. A doctor to be admired one month, a thing to be chewed on the next... If Ina wasn't currently curling up around and inside the quilt like a dormant candle spark, she'd probably be unconsciously biting into his wing right now. (And even then, he isn't necessarily putting it past her to find a way.)  
  
He can feel a smile spread across his beak as he looks at her, to his right. Her curled-up silhouette is easy to make out, even in the mostly-dark, patches backlit by the stars and moons sweeping over the pale white ceiling and the crimson walls. A crescent grin passes over her, highlighting her resting eyes and her tiny fingers in her mouth. It's funny - she can get into any number of scrapes at the park and become a tornado of fearlessness and noise, yet she still needs this night light to soothe her into sleep.  
_[My silly Ina...]_  
  
Did he crash into her, on that first day? Or did she crash into him, grabbing him and pulling him along for the ride? Perhaps, he guesses, like he does every time he asks himself this question, an equal measure of both. Literally, the second; metaphorically, the first.  
Except now, there's someone else to consider. A blast from his recent past has burst, unexpectedly, into this life right alongside him and her.  
  
The smile falters and he turns to his left, as if to confirm it. Sure enough, next to him lies one of his patients, facing away and yet sleeping closer than he ever has.  
Dub.  
  
It is he around which the abnormality of today has been focused. Not here for the morning, not here for the midday, not here for the beginning of his second attempt to explain to Lemmy the projectionist theory, then suddenly the depressed turtle right on his doorstep. Then in front of him. Then clinging to him as if letting go meant he would burst into flames.  
The depressed turtle that played such a key part in his darkest period, thanks to a claw, a dream and a promise.  
  
"I don't think I ever apologised for that, did I?" he finds himself whispering - partly to himself, partly to the toy next to him. "For not keeping that promise. Sorry."  
Dub's hands twitch a little under the rotating moons as he lets out a quiet snore.  
"Dub? Did I wake you up?" he says, as quietly as he can.  
No reply, but another twitch.  
"I'll take that as a no."  
  
No reply... Dub has been silent for most of his first afternoon. No verbal communication with Lemmy, just taking in his spontaneous tour of the upper floor. Not a word to Ina herself, when she returned from the park full of seemingly limitless energy and joy at the discovery of a new toy.  
(The latter, at least, is understandable. It's hard to find the words to say to a two-year-old with more capacity and desire for throwing and spinning than lengthy conversation. He had that problem at first too.)  
In fact, only one line from Dub's mouth at all, in the depths of that hug. And then a quiet so prominent Wood half hopes he imagined the words.  
  
Dub's eyes flicker, mini-blinking, and his mouth moves. Is he mouthing them now in his dreams?  
  
"You know, part of me does understand what you meant," Wood begins again, comfortable in adding a little volume. "I wasn't lying when I said I've been where you have. Not in the "lost owner" department, obviously, but..."  
_[Not in so many words, anyway.]_  
"...but I have been - was - obsessed. With you. Following you more closely than Kroko and Sly. Finding common ground where little actually was...yet. And yes, I admit, being physically attracted."  
What else could that first errant jolt of electricity have been but that? That jolt echoed in the last hug, even then, even now as he looks at the sleeping form, goldish-green in the patches of starlight, complete with orange shell and the remnants of unused possibly-muscles?  
  
He hesitates, then voices a different question.  
"And yet I'm not the one who... how did you put it? Forgot how to exist. Why?"  
  
He feels foolish asking a turtle that can't even hear him right now. He might as well be talking to Ina for all the help Dub is being. Both are curled up either side of him, sleeping the hectic day away, even when Wood himself cannot.  
Perhaps that is why he is talking to what amounts to a stone wall. To occupy the too-awake mind and parse through the problematic parts.  
  
"I can guess at why, but I can't truly know until you actually start talking. Why did you forget? Or, more accurately I suppose, why did you not want to forget  **me**? It's like I asked earlier - why cling to me?"  
Dub only breathes in response.  
"Perhaps it's because I had others where you did not. Your owner - Max, I think? - was gone and you were all alone. In that way, I could be a substitute for the feelings of affection, which conflated into this natural desire. I had the therapist, I had Nadel, I had Lilo and Dolly to follow me too..."  
He trails off, reconsiders. Dub's hands twitch again, and his eyelids shiver rapidly.  
  
"No, that doesn't work," he picks back up. "Even at the top of the world, as the God I was supposed to be -  **had**  to be - "  
_[No, don't think like that, Wood. Stop.]_  
"Even then, I was as alone as you. That was kind of my problem in the first place. That's why I needed Ina to--"  
He catches mid-word again, looks back at his little girl.  
"...I still need Ina. To ground me. To stop myself from remembering things I shouldn't."  
  
_[And now **you're**  here,]_ he thinks harshly, _[to bring that forbidden time right back again.]_  
  
"Damn you, Dub," he blurts, thoughts of being quiet for her benefit forgotten. "I was supposed to forget. That's why I left in the first place; being surrounded by anyone who depends on me, least of all you, isn't safe for any of us! One false move and it's the Claw Association or something akin to it all over again. How could you take that risk, knowing the result?!"  
Not for the first time, he wishes he had his hood on wing, to squeeze, but it's still in the ironing pile and her mother is asleep and there is no one to bring it to him. He grips the sheet covering him instead, twisting the fabric between fabric.  
"I should hate you right now. I should want you out there, back with Max, and the past with you!"  
  
The words hang in the air, barbed and sharp. Ina lets out a little whimper. He softens, inside, under renewed logic; the blanket uncreases and his voice drops.  
"But you can't go back there. You insisted on coming here, foolish as you are, and it would be rude to kick you out now. And. ...And I can't bring myself to hate you."  
  
Dub has stopped twitching.  
  
"I don't hate you, but... at the same time, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about you now. I didn't forget how to exist, with you gone, or me gone, I guess. But that obsession of mine. It never went away completely. Nothing of me can ever go away completely, no matter how hard I try to forget. You just serve as a reminder of that, and I don't like it."  
He takes a breath to ease himself. He's losing his train of thought. He must be getting tired.  
"I guess what I really want to know is... how do you feel about me? Truly? Putting all claws and broken promises aside, forgetting anyone who hurt you - if you only take tomorrow into consideration, you and me being Ina's toys, me being a toy, you being a toy... if you pretend not to depend on me. Just once. How do I make you feel?"  
  
...  
Nothing. Just as he expected.  
  
"...Okay. Never mind. Sorry about all that," he finishes. "Just, forget I said anything. ...Good night, Dub. [Good night, Ina.]"  
He turns away and pulls his share of the blanket over his body. His eyes drift shut and he tries to push all thought and resentment and memory from his mind, focusing instead on the cool embrace of sleep.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"I love you."

The words bring him back out from the brink and into the bedroom once more. He flips over to find that Dub has shifted around too, looking right into him now. Awake.  
  
"What did you say?"  
  
Dub looks down, then up at Wood. "I- you asked how I feel about you, and... and I love you. Have since the whole "taking you over the ocean" thing. Silly, I know, but. There you go."  
  
"Okay, you sneak, how long have you been awake? How much have you heard?"  
  
"Not much," he shrugs. "Just that - you asking me that."  
Then something sinks in and his lower eyelids curve a little. "Why? Did you say anything else I should have heard?" he asks, voice tinged with suspicion now.  
  
For a single half-second, Wood is tempted to repeat his entire rant at the newcomer, to blame him anew for this confusion and this fear and this foray into the unknown.  
And then it passes. He can't. Dub just said that he... he can't crush him like that.  
Not now.  
  
"No, Dub, you're fine," says Wood, moving back to where he had been.  
"You sure?"  
"Yes. Really. You should go back to sleep. Ina usually has a busy Sunday, and you need all the energy you can get."  
"Okay. If you're sure. 'night."  
"Good night." Once again, his eyes close.  
  
After a few seconds of pause, Wood feels a shape pressed against his back, an arm pulling the two bodies closer together. "Do you mind if I-"  
"As long as you don't squirm," he says, not willing to argue.  
"Thanks."  
"Okay, good night."  
  
"...I mean it. I love you, Wood. I'm glad I'm here with you."  
" **Good night** , Dub."  
  
Everything quietens down after that, for the fire-fuelled little girl, the softening-stone turtle and the raven who once touched red-white stars. As sleep finally consumes it all, the night stretches ahead of the three into a small eternity.


End file.
